TSMC Said to Ship Apple SoCs

NEW YORK CITY – Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) began shipping mobile processors to Apple during the second quarter of this year and will continue through 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported.

"Apple makes all of its suppliers sign a vow of silence," said Nathan Brookwood, principal of market watcher Insight64. "There have been consistent rumors over the past year that Apple is going to turn to TSMC for the next microprocessor that's going to be used in the iPhone 6, which is rumored to come out in September."

Although the reports haven't been substantiated by either company officially, TSMC reportedly signed a deal with the iPhone maker last year to supply processors using its FinFET process at the 16- and 10-nm nodes, after beginning with 20-nm planar CMOS. Until now, Apple's mobile SoCs have been made solely by archrival Samsung, which Apple sued for infringement of its iPhone and iPad patents.

Rumors that TSMC began shipping in earnest didn't surprise analysts. Brookwood said the move to TSMC may be a result of Apple's rocky relationship with Samsung. Analyst Peter Glaskowsky said Apple simply may be making moves to secure its supply chain.

"It's really important that you have continuity of supply for high volume devices... I think this is a question of making sure you have alternate supplies; occasionally there are issues with production because of earthquakes and floods," Glaskowsky told EE Times. "TSMC and Samsung are both tier one manufactures, I have no doubt Apple can achieve the same results in terms of power and efficiency from both companies."

It's still possible Apple may use other foundries. Globalfoundries licensed Samsung's 14 nm FinFET process for production next year, providing an alternative to TSMC for a process closely aligned with one Apple uses. The high volume, steep ramps for mobile products that have a 12- to 18-month life cycle creates pressure to have multiple fab suppliers.

"It's completely conceivable that [in] the generation that comes after the iPhone 6... [Apple] could move to Globalfoundries -- its FinFET process should be in cards next year," Brookwood noted.

Whether Apple will split its devices among various foundries or allow for one large contract remains to be seen.

"It's just going to boil down to question of execution -- how well can TSMC operate as a supplier for Apple. If they can deliver high performance, high efficiency chips to Apple, Apple will ship more chips with them," Glaskowsky said, adding that the race to 14nm will play a role. "TSMC has been under threat for decades now, a lot of people would like to be the world's largest contract fab."

All these foundries seem to be chasing the same leading-edge business - which will inevitably shrink as the ROI of scaling diminishes. This is not accounting for Intel making a big play in the Foundry space with its huge capacity and world-class fabrication capability. Someone will be left owning a lot of expensive and under-utilized equipment.

Sure in the past years, i well know this, as Apple devices were a news for customers but now it's totally different. Apple is the very first to ship a 20nm SOC, not even Qualcomm will be able to do this with 810; Apple nearly is working in the risk production (low yields) because their devices are slowly losing appeal, they need of A8 "now" not sometime n H1 next year. The same patterning will follow on 16nm and 10nm because Apple has realized that without a fast refresh of phones and tablets the USA market will shift to good enough devices mediatek/rockchip powered.

And yes, many of the news on latests SOCs are only crappy gadgets, no innovation. Do you call innovation an LTE modem capable of 300Mbps on a carrier infrastructure able to give only 15/20Mbps if all goes well......it's a gadget for idiots, like fingerprint.....in a phone?? LOL. We do not speak of the displays and Gpus with a resolution that the human eye is unable to appreciate on little diagonal.

Looks like you have no idea of what you are talking about. Apple, typically, uses one (or two) nodes removed from the latest, bleeding edge process nodes that the foundaries supply. That's not because they don't want to; like you rightly mention, it takes time to get to reasonable yields on the latest technology nodes and no one would like not to make more money!

And what useless gadgets? There are good uses with every technology innovation and leaps. And that kindles innovation too.

We are in strange times. Apple, Qualcomm and others want a new shrink every 12/18 months, mainly to have "new" produts in shops to attract the customer to buy useless gadgets. Foudries are under pressure because this fast shrink is "NOT POSSIBLE" expecially at finer nodes like 14nm or 10nm.

This is the reason Apple is silent about supplier, she goes to the faster one on a given one, changing every year if possible.

I think than this is a crazy manner to do business. Instead of innovate (a tick tock ala Intel for example), they want to shrink fast adding new features to shitty ARM ISA.

My best wishes to Foundries, still i dont think this approach will be usefull to archieve strong transistor performance and dramatic power reductions, These things need time and the two years cycle is the minimum, three years i think could be even better at these terrific nodes without the help of good tools from ASML.